The Calvinist International
When we come to read the Bible, the best parts of the Christian theological tradition–from the ancients to Calvin to, in the contemporary world, John Webster–bear witness that the one thing really needful is not a literary aesthetics, but a literary ascetics. Here is an example from the eponymous essay in John Webster’s recent collection The Domain […]
I recently completed a series on the motif of “exile” in 1 Peter (Part 1; Part 2; Part 3) in which I argued that the accent is placed on the alienation of holiness from sin, and not essentially or in the first instance on anything having to do with politics, culture, church-and-statery, etc. I was […]
Some time back, I wrote a little in exploration of the relation, or ordering, of creation to redemption from an exegetical point of view. I recently was listening to John Webster’s Kantzer lectures from 2007, “Perfection & Presence: God with Us, according to the Christian Confession” (mentioned previously here), and he very nicely gets at […]
Once more on purification and the theological task: In Holy Scripture: A Dogmatic Sketch, John Webster, with the assistance of Kierkegaard and Calvin, helpfully integrates the proper reading of Scripture with sanctification, that is, with mortification and vivification. In the passage below, he explicates the latter. Vivification is a process of overcoming not only inept reading, […]
A succinct statement of the principles discussed in respect to 1 Corinthians 1 the other day, from John Calvin’s commentary on Psalm 47:9 (“The princes of the peoples gather as the people of the God of Abraham. For the shields of the earth belong to God; he is highly exalted!”), in a manner reminiscent (or, […]